IN its 74th year, the Venice Film Festival is once again debuting a slate of potential Oscar contenders from top directors, including George Clooney, Darren Aronofsky and Guillermo del Toro.

Festival director Alberto Barbera on Thursday unveiled the lineup for this year at the Cinema Moderno in Rome.

“I’m very satisfied,” Barbera said about the slate. “I have to say that I am 97 percent satisfied in the sense that there are only maybe two or three films that we wanted to have for the festival, and we couldn’t, because they will go to other festivals. So all the films that we saw and that we wanted to have are in the lineup of this year’s festival.”

As previously announced, Alexander Payne’s satire “Downsizing,” starring Matt Damon, will open the event in competition. The film is about a family that seeks a better life through shrinking. It also stars Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz, Laura Dern and Jason Sudeikis. Vying for the Golden Lion this year, to be award by a jury led by Annette Bening, are 21 world premieres.

Darren Aronofsky, who presided over the Venice jury in 2011, will bring his eagerly anticipated horror film “Mother!” to the fest. The pic, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem and Ed Harris, centers around a relationship being tested after the arrival of unwelcome visitors.

Damon will be pulling double-duty at the festival as he will also star in George Clooney’s “Suburbicon,” written by Clooney and the Coen brothers, which focuses on a family’s moral descension after a home invasion goes very wrong. It also stars Coen favorites Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac and Josh Brolin.

Abdellatif Kechiche will bring his 1980s coming-of-age story “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno” to the fest, and Paolo Virzi will premiere his first full English-language pic, “The Leisure Seeker,” starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland.

Out of competition, the festival continues its relationship with Netflix with the world premiere of “Our Souls at Night,” with honorary Golden Lions going to the film’s stars Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

Netflix also will premiere its first Italian production, the modern-day mafia saga “Suburra.” It also will screen the Errol Morris series “Wormwood,” starring Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker, the festival’s only non-world premiere.

Also out of competition, Stephen Frears will premiere “Victoria & Abdul,” starring Judi Dench, Ali Fazal and Eddie Izzard in a pic about the unlikely friendship between Queen Victoria and a young Indian clerk. And Fernando Leon De Aranoa’s “Loving Pablo,” starring Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard, will debut.(SD-Agencies)